Cricket Mania

Remember your school days? Your favourite aunt was coming to visit on a particular day and you had to go to school. Did you take it lying down? Yes and no. No, figuratively and yes, literally. Suddenly you had a bout of severe headache where you could not lift your head  and you could fool your mom into letting you stay at home. How the headache vanished miraculously as soon as aunt arrived – don't ask me.

How about the time you were too sick to go to the physics examination, because you were not prepared, or so you thought? Or the time you wanted to stay in bed longer and lounge around on a Monday, and called up office saying your darling child had run away from home or your pet sparrow had just died ?

Well, you now have some consolation in knowing that you are not the only incorrigible person around. There are many other fully grown adults who indulge in the same kind of behaviour . Today's newspaper had an interesting article on the excuses people are coming up with to take leave off work on (no prizes for guessing) Wednesday to watch the India-Pakistan cricket match. The cricket fever has reached a pitch and has people lying (pun intended) through their teeth to stay off work.

While some are more blatant and use bullying tactics  to get their bosses to let them of work in the afternoon, the others are thinking up some very innovative excuses.

From planning to feign an asthma attack at noon , so as to reach home to watch the match on time, to pretending to be away on field duty, to claiming there is hardly any work in the office, to taking advantage of being the boss (so who can question your absence), all possible excuses are being invented to get at least the afternoon off work. But the most innovative of them was a pilot claiming he had discovered he had a fear  of heights and needed to visit the psychiatrist !

I was at the receiving end of my physiotherapist's displeasure last Thursday when I landed up for my treatment. He hinted not so subtly that if I had not gone that day, he would have left earlier to watch the match. I do not know if the rather excessive workout  and the consequent pain in my shoulder had anything to do with the cricketmatch, but I have become wiser in the last one week and have decided not to go for treatment this Wednesday.

By the way, are you looking for an excuse to bunk tomorrow to watch cricket?  Well, since you are my friends, I'll provide you a few choice ones here.  Hope they come in useful.  

• Your car conked out and you had to push it to the nearest garage which was 5 kms away from home. They had to carry you physically to the nearest human garage and inject a unit each of saline and glucose, before you could go home.
• Your child had spilt some Superglue on the chair on which you sat without looking.  So you could not get off in time to come to work.
• Your husband / wife inadvertently locked you inside the house when going to work, and there was no way you could get out till he / she got back late in the evening.

What say?

We Indians surely do not lack creativity when it comes to finding ways of watching a cricket match .